daphne bramham: canada fails to act on security concerns involving china
opinion: canada's failure to address foreign interference has left diaspora members open to threats and fearful to speak out
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while official ottawa is focused on election integrity, the reality of foreign interference quietly plays out in diaspora communities across canada.
people are afraid. there have been death threats. people have been subject to intimidation and harassment. if they report it to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, often nothing happens.
so, when public safety minister marco mendicino asked to meet with chinese canadians in vancouver to talk about setting up a foreign agent registry, participants set conditions.
the meeting had to be held privately and their names kept confidential. before agreeing, they needed to know who else would be there.
it meant high-profile people were excluded because of a real and growing mistrust over whether their loyalties are more closely aligned with the people’s republic of china or canada.
tensions have been rising in vancouver’s chinese-canadian community ever since high-profile confrontations in 2019 between supporters of hong kong’s democracy movement and beijing’s defenders.
it hasn’t helped that some of the city’s largest and oldest chinese organizations have bought newspaper ads supporting the prc’s imposition of a national security law in hong kong and its denials of a uyghur genocide.
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friendships are being torn apart that while someone may not be an outright spy or an agent of the communist party regime, they’re too pro-beijing.
those suspicions are often based on who is seen with whom, what groups they belong to and whether those organizations’ websites use simplified chinese characters (as mandarin speakers do) or traditional (as hong kong’s cantonese speakers do).
the wide net of suspicion was an inflection point in last year’s civic elections.
it’s eroding the community and trust in democratic institutions because of government failures to protect against foreign meddling. and that appears to be what mendicino heard at his meeting.
“the key takeaway for me from the vancouver conversation is that it’s proving exactly why we need a (foreign agent) registry,” he said in a later interview.
having been guaranteed a safe place to speak, participants told him about death threats and intimidation — concerns that mendicino said he took seriously.
“it takes great courage and resolve to now help fight against foreign interference,” the minister told me, noting that some had fled authoritarian regimes to come to canada.
he acknowledged the challenge of navigating the deep divide and agreed that because of that he may not have heard a broad range of perspectives.
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“during the meeting, we took a moment to recognize that there will be different views. but what distinguishes canada from authoritarian regimes is the ability to express those freely without fear of repression,” mendicino said. “i think that we can find unifying cause in that.”
the minister wouldn’t be specific about what threats participants told him about — mendicino said he had promised to connect them with the appropriate law enforcement agencies.
but the nub of canada’s and canadians’ problem isn’t that the police, csis and the communications security establishment aren’t aware of foreign interference.
they are. they have repeatedly warned politicians and asked for more tools.
documents released friday by jody thomas, prime minister trudeau’s national security and intelligence adviser, confirmed that since 2018 at least 44 formal briefings have been provided to the pm, ministers and other members of parliament with security clearance.
that doesn’t include what thomas described as routine briefings that weren’t formally scheduled.
the problem is that canada hasn’t acted on those concerns.
several times during our conversation mendicino used the word ‘relentless’ to describe what the trudeau government has done to root out foreign interference.
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csis’s mandate was expanded and election spending rules were updated in 2019. the national security and intelligence committee of parliamentarians was established in 2017. comprised of up to eight mps and three senators with top security clearance, the committee’s mandate is to review national security measures and make recommendations.
the committee made recommendations in 2019 after csis reported that elected and public officials across all levels of government were being targeted. it urged developing a comprehensive strategy, addressing “institutional vulnerabilities” and reviewing canada’s security and intelligence legislation.
those recommendations were ignored.
its annual report released last fall said the committee “encourages the government to respond to the recommendations of the committee’s seven previous reviews of critical issues in the security and intelligence community, including … the absence of a whole-of-government strategy to address foreign interference in canada.”
the reality is that except for a flood of top-secret documents leaked to the media over the last two months from what appear to be one or more frustrated whistleblowers, nothing would be happening now.
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friday’s document dump likely wouldn’t have happened. katie telford, the pm’s chief-of-staff, wouldn’t have been before a parliamentary committee that same day.
former governor-general david johnston would never have been appointed to make recommendations on what to do next.
and, mendicino would likely not be flying across the country doing consultations on a foreign agent registry. why? because it seems concerns that a registry and just about every other recommendation to combat foreign interference might be perceived as racist or a witch-hunt kept getting in the way.
while mendicino tried to reassure that the people and resources are already in place to protect canadians, democratic institutions and the economy, he said: “we need to be eyes wide-open.”
it seems that official ottawa has finally figured it out.
as a chinese community member wryly told me last week: “just because somebody calls it a witch-hunt, doesn’t mean there aren’t witches.”
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